Volume I Part 14 (1/2)
Under the second Charles Rhode Island fared quite as well as Connecticut. This was remarkable, inasmuch as the little colony of three thousand souls, in their four towns of Providence, Newport, Portsmouth, and Warwick, insisted on ”holding forth the lively experiment”--and it proved lively indeed--”of full liberty in religious concernments.”
Charles did not oppose this, and Clarendon favored it, a motive of both here, as with Connecticut, being to rear in New England a power friendly to the Crown, that should rival and check Ma.s.sachusetts. Both these commonwealths were granted absolute independence in all but name. No oath of allegiance to the king was demanded. Appeals to England were not provided for.
[1680]
Though having no quarrel with the king, the two southern colonies were not without their trials. Connecticut, besides continual fear of the Dutch and the Indians, was much agitated by the controversy over the question whether children of moral parents not church members should be baptized, a question at length settled affirmatively by the so-called Half-Way Covenant. It also had its boundary disputes with Ma.s.sachusetts, with Rhode Island--for Connecticut took the Narragansett River of its charter to be the bay of that name--and with New York, which, by the Duke of York's new patent, issued on the recovery of that province from the Dutch in 1674, reached the Connecticut River. During England's war with Holland, 1672-74, all the colonies stood in some fear of Dutch attacks.
[1685]
Rhode Island had worse troubles than Connecticut. It, too, had boundary disputes, serious and perpetual; but graver by much were its internal feuds, caused partly by the mutual jealousy of its four towns, partly by the numerous and jarring religious persuasions here represented.
Government was painfully feeble. Only with utmost difficulty could the necessary taxes be raised. Warwick in particular was for some time in arrears to John Clark, of Newport, for his invaluable services in securing the charter of 1663. Quakers and the divers sorts of Baptists valiantly warred each against other, using, with dreadful address, those most deadly of carnal weapons, tongue and pen. On George Fox's visit to the colony, Roger Williams, zealous for a debate, pursued the eminent Quaker from Providence to Newport, rowing thither in his canoe and arriving at midnight, only to find that his intended opponent had departed, The latter's champion was ready, however, and a discussion of four days ensued.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Edmond Andros]
Before its sentence of death reached Ma.s.sachusetts Charles II. was no more, and James II., his brother, had ascended the throne. It was for a time uncertain what sort of authority the stricken colony would be called to accept. Already, as Duke of York, James II. had been Proprietary of Maine east of the Kennebec (Sagadahoc), as well as of Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. Now that he had the problem of ruling Ma.s.sachusetts to solve, it naturally occurred to the king to make Sir Edmond Andros, already governor of New York, master also over the whole of English America from the Saint Croix to the Delaware.
In southern New England the reign of Andros wrought no downright persecution. He suspended the charters, and, with an irresponsible council in each colony, a.s.sumed all legislative as well as administrative power. Rhode Island submitted tamely. Her sister colony did the same, save that, at Hartford, according to good tradition, in the midst of the altercation about delivering the charter, prolonged into candle-light, suddenly it was dark, and the precious doc.u.ment disappeared to a secure place in the hollow trunk of an oak. This tree, henceforth called the Charter Oak, stood till prostrated by a gale on August 20, 1856.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Charter Oak at Hartford.]
But in Ma.s.sachusetts the colonists' worst fears were realized. Andros, with a council of his own creation, made laws, levied taxes, and controlled the militia. He had authority to suppress all printing-presses and to encourage Episcopacy. In the latter interest he opened King's Chapel to the Prayer Book. His permission was required for any one to leave the colony. Extortionate fees and taxes were imposed.
Puritans had to swear on the Bible, which they regarded wicked, or be disfranchised. Personal and proprietary rights were summarily set at naught, and all deeds to land were declared void till renewed--for money, of course. The citizens were reduced to a condition hardly short of slavery.
[1688]
There is no describing the joy which pervaded New England as the news of the Revolution of 1688 flew from colony to colony. Andros slunk away from Boston, glad to escape alive. Drums beat and gala-day was kept. Old magistrates were reinstated. Town meetings were resumed. All believed that G.o.d had interposed, in answer to prayer, to bring deliverance to his people from popery and thraldom.
This revolution, ushering in the liberal monarchy of William and Mary, restored to Rhode Island and Connecticut their old charter governments in full. New Hamps.h.i.+re, after a momentary union with Ma.s.sachusetts again, became once more a royal province. As to Ma.s.sachusetts itself, a large party of the citizens now either did not wish the old state of things renewed, or were too timid to agree in demanding back their charter as of right. Had they been bold and united, they might have succeeded in this without any opposition from the Crown. Instead, a new charter was conferred, creating Ma.s.sachusetts also a royal province, yet with government more liberal than the other provinces of this order enjoyed. The governor was appointed by the Crown, and could convene, adjourn, or dissolve the Legislature. With the consent of his council he also created the judges, from whose highest sentence appeal could be taken to the Privy Council. The governor could veto legislation, and the king annul any law under three years old.
[1690-1697]
If in these things the new polity was inferior to the old, in two respects it was superior; Suffrage was now practically universal, and every species of religious profession, save Catholicism, made legal.
Also, Ma.s.sachusetts territory was enlarged southward to take in all Plymouth, eastward to embrace Maine (Sagadahoc) and Nova Scotia. Maine, henceforth including Sagadahoc, that is, all land eastward to the Saint Croix, remained part of Ma.s.sachusetts till March 15, 1820, when it became a member of the Union by itself. Nova Scotia, over which Phips's conquest of Port Royal in 1690 had established a nominal rather than a real English authority, was a.s.signed to France again by the Treaty of Ryswick, 1697.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Box in which the Connecticut Charter was kept.]
CHAPTER II.
KING PHILIP'S WAR
[1675]
Simultaneously with the Stuart Restoration another cloud darkened the New England sky. Since the Pequot War, Indians and whites had in the main been friendly. This by itself is proof that our fathers were less unjust to the red men than is sometimes charged. They did a.s.sume the right to acquire lands here, and they had this right. The Indians were not in any proper sense owners of New England. They were few--by 1660 not more numerous than the pale-faces--and, far from settling or occupying the land, roamed from place to place. Had it been otherwise they, as barbarians, would have had no such claim upon the territory as to justify them in barring out civilization. However, the colonists did not plead this consideration. Whenever districts were desired to which Indians had any obvious t.i.tle, it was both law and custom to pay them their price. In this, Roger Williams and William Penn were not peculiar.
If individual white men sometimes cheated in land trades, as in other negotiations, the aggrieved side could not, and did not, regard this as the white man's policy.
Yet little by little the Indians came to distrust and hate the rival race. It did not matter to the son of the forest, even if he thought so far, that the neighborhood of civilization greatly bettered his lot in many things, as, for instance, giving him market for corn and peltry, which he could exchange for fire-arms, blankets, and all sorts of valuable conveniences. The efforts to teach and elevate him he appreciated still less. As has been said, he loved better to disfurnish the outside of other people's heads than to furnish the inside of his own. What he felt, and keenly, was that the newcomers treated him as an inferior, were day by day narrowing his range, and slowly but surely reducing his condition to that of a subject people. Dull as he was, he saw that one of three fates confronted him: to perish, to migrate, or to lay aside his savage character and mode of life. Such thoughts frenzied him.
The beautiful fidelity of Ma.s.sasoit to the people of Plymouth is already familiar. His son Alexander, who succeeded him, was of a spirit diametrically the reverse. Convinced that he was plotting with the Narragansets for hostile action, the Governor and Council of Plymouth sent Major Winslow to bring him to court--for it must be remembered that Ma.s.sasoit's tribe, the Pokanokets, had through him covenanted, though probably with no clear idea of what this meant, to be subject to the Plymouth government. Alexander, for some reason, became fatally ill while at Plymouth under arrest, dying before reaching home. The Indians suspected poison.
His brother Philip now became sachem. Philip already had a grudge against the whites, and was rendered trebly bitter by the indignity and violence, if nothing worse, to which Alexander had been subjected. He resolved upon war, and in 1675 war was begun.